If y'all recall, I announced the formation of Kindred Protective Arts as a stand-alone martial arts school last week.
The outpouring of support from so many of you has been... well...
I don't have the word to express how grateful I am. You guys are awesome.
I know, me, without words. Whodathunkit?
Since that announcement about a week ago, many things have happened.
Okay, so, we signed the lease on Saturday morning, which was the 20th anniversary of the passing of Remy Presas, founder of Modern Arnis. An auspicious day for it, no?
Then for the rest of the weekend we were very busy with a Kombatan seminar, our last Meetup as we knew it, and a private lesson from GM Shelley Millspaugh (and WOW that was time well spent - I love how he teaches, I really do). My shoulder is not up to training very long or hard (the lack of endurance is SO ANNOYING), but I took some great notes and Mr. Chick got to literally bang sticks for something on the order of 10 hours over the weekend.
Did I mention my teacher Mark Lynn had come up here to KC for that seminar? Well, he did, so having him there when I got the keys was SO cool.
VERY productive and happy weekend.
Then on Monday morning...
I got laid off from my job.
I was part of a large group of people let go that day, and weirdly enough, in the moment, I wasn't shocked, or upset, or angry, or sad, or scared about losing my job.
This was sort of my reaction:
Yeah, "wooo-hooo!" is a strange reaction to losing your job, but there you go.
I didn't want to leave my job. I liked my job, my coworkers, it wasn't my intent to leave any time soon. Plus, I had laid out a very conservative plan to building our school.
Y'all long-time readers know that I'm a PLANNER, I like to have a PLAN. I'm always trying to anticipate what comes next.
In this case, when a really tough thing like losing my job happened, I had a plan for it in place, and all I had to do is start executing it, faster than I'd originally thought I'd be able to, but it was already ready to go.
I got off that phone call and immediately started running the errands I was going to have to spread out over the week, working down my to-do list.
You see? That "always gotta have a plan" thing PAID OFF.
Thus, of this writing on September 1, 2021, I'm about a week and a half ahead of schedule.
We started advertising and we got our first kids trial class appointment booked. Our first adult class is going to happen on Thursday.
A great friend (and student) of ours gave us a gift of two hand-made amazing benches to use for the waiting area in our school, and they're PERFECT.
All the little things I need to do have been slowly and steadily GETTING DONE.
It's like this what needed to happen, it's what was meant to be.
I mentioned how supportive all y'all have been at the beginning of this post, and I want to talk a little more about it.
All of the advice, use of photos (and that's NOT a trivial matter, y'all), and help spreading the word is AMAZING, and I am so happy to be a part of this community. Some of you I've never even met in person and you've got my back, helping as you can.
That is just...
LOL, too late, totally did cry already.
Really, instead of having a panic attack and fear of what I was going to do in the wake of losing my job, I know I have you guys on our side rooting for us and that makes it a lot easier to work my tail off to make this happen.
Those of you who know my martial arts lineage, know that my teacher got his 1st black in Modern Arnis, and is one of the highest ranked students of W. Hock Hochheim, of Force Necessary. Mr. Chick is also a direct student of Hock's, and we get to see him from time to time.
Immediately when we announced the formation of KPA, Hock immediately reached out to us and offered this:
Hock is going to to two-day seminar for us the 2nd weekend of October, to benefit KPA. We're bootstrapping our school, self-funding with a little help from our families, so this benefit is a HUGE deal for us, and will absolutely make a big difference in helping us get off the ground.
That weekend is our Grand Opening weekend, where I plan to have an open house and a party on Friday, October 8, and then we'll host Hock on Saturday and Sunday.
It's gonna ROCK, y'all.
You can see Hock's seminar schedule HERE and see us on it in October. Once I get a FB event built for it - which should happen today - I'll share it to the KPA Facebook page as well as on The Stick Chick Facebook page (here).
The fact that Hock thought of doing this for us, and reached out to us (such a thing never even occurred to us)...
Again, I'm speechless. It's an amazing gift.
I'm very touched, and so lucky, and grateful.
As for this blog:
As I noted, I'm STUPID BUSY right now getting the school going, so, blog posts are going to be intermittent as best until I can get us in to an operating rhythm. Dunno how long that is going to take, as the timing of my plans is out the window at the moment.
So don't worry if you don't see me posting on the blog or in the blog's social media for a few days at a time. I'm coming back, promise.
And when I do, I'll be posting as Guro Jackie Bradbury, Instructor at Kindred Protective Arts, my town's newest and the area's only school teaching Filipino Martial Arts as our primary style.
Ok, I have to get moving, I'll catch y'all later.